The Whiskey Lullaby
by breakthehabit
Summary: They watched him drink his pain away, a little at a time...


Hey everyone...this story came into my head one night after "Heroes"...Dannys not doing to well after Aiden's death. :(

I dont own CSI...yeah, or the song

(p.s.-i'm not abandoning my other story...i just got this stuck in my head)

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Whiskey Lullaby

**_She put him out like the burnin' end of a midnight cigarette _**

**_She broke his heart, he spent his whole life tryin' to forget _**

**_We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time _**

**_But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind..._**

It wasn't hard to see how Danny Messer had changed.

The normally bright eyed CSI had become sullen and quiet, and no one could miss the dark circles shadowing his eyes, red and bloodshot when they had once been so vibrant and alive. But there wasn't a trace of that liveliness in then anymore, only raw pain, and a kind of deadness that his friends had seen before. It was a kind of deadness that they saw in the eyes of the ones who had given up, the victims that had resigned to themselves that they would never be able to cope with what has happened, never be able to move on. It seemed so out of place, that look, in the eyes of such a free spirit as Danny Messer, but there was no mistaking it.

Danny Messer was giving up.

The enthusiasm he had once held for his job had left him, and he rarely showed up for work on time anymore. When he did finally walk in the door he rarely said a word, and often dressed in the same clothes he had fallen asleep in the night before, hair disheveled and glasses smudged. His coworkers at first said nothing-it was only natural, they knew, for him to be out of it. Aiden's death, so close to the near death of his brother, had forced him to go through hell, a hell that few of them could really understand. But it had a month, almost two, since the burned and charred body had been identified, and Danny had shown no sign of recovering. Instead, he appeared to be sinking, faster and deeper than anyone could have predicted. He would stand, dull eyed and defeated, in Mac's office as he chastised him for being late, or sit staring blankly at the locker that had once been Aiden's in the lockerroom.

Somedays, he just couldn't muster the strength or will to even get out of bed. It was as if a piece of him was missing, like there was a gaping hole somewhere in his heart that he could never fill, but never live with. He would lie there, staring often for hours at a time at nothing in particular. A ceiling tile, a cloud in the sky, a crack in the whitewashed walls of his apartment-it didn't matter, he never really _saw_ it, anyway. Instead, all he could see was the beautiful face that he had taken for granted, that he had seen almost everyday, but at the same time had never really _seen._ And now it was too late.

Danny knew he was falling, but he didn't care. A certain darkness was overtaking him, a darkness that he knew he couldn't escape. It seemed to hover like a giant black cloud casting its shadow on him, beating down on him until he was almost numb from the pain, and he couldn't escape it.

Except for lately. Lately, he had managed to find a single port in the storm, one that he knew could have its side effects, but frankly, he didn't really care. It was something he could grasp and hold on to, something that gave him a reason to get out of his apartment, to keep his feet moving as he left the lab every night. The corner bar had become his sanctuary, his heaven. He hardly knew how long he spent there every night, downing drink after drink, stumbling out to the curb and hailing a cab only to pass out in his apartment. The only thing he knew was that everytime the bottle touched his lips, he could almost forget her face...her memory...

_**We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time **_

_**But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind...**_

Mac Taylor had never seen Danny so defeated.

Throughout the entire Minhas ordeal, Danny had been a a nervous wreck, but he had never given up on his innocence. When Mac had told him to stay put, he couldn't, and went to Internal Affairs himself to tell his story. It had landed him in further in hot water with his boss, but still, he never wavered. Not like now.

He didn't even try and defend himself when Mac chastised him for his tardiness, didn't even meet his eyes. Stella, Flack, and Lindsay had also noticed this detatchment, the lack of emotion that Danny displayed whenever he was in their prescense. It was as if he was only the shell, and the heart and soul that was once Danny Messer had been torn out.

When they had found Aiden, Danny had reacted the way Mac had thought he would-with anger. Anger, and a need for revenge against DJ Pratt-if Danny had been in that interrogation room, Mac would swear that Pratt wouldn't have lived to see prison. He had toasted Aiden later that night, when the group of them had met to mourn one of their own, and he had appeared as normal as someone could be, considering the circumstances.

But something had happened. The next morning he had come to work late, shadows under his bloodshot eyes and the dead look in his eyes that had scared the living daylights out of his friends.

They had given him his space, at first. The realization of what had happened was hitting him, they knew. It had hit them in the same way, only not nearly as hard. It wasn't difficult to see that Aiden and Danny had been more than friends, and that he had loved her.

As time went by, though, Danny's state worsened. Flack had tried to talk to him, tried to get him back into a normal routine. He had taken him to a baseball game, Mac remembered, to try and cheer him up, but it hadn't worked. Lindsay and Stella had tried to invite him out to dinner, to get him away from the lab and out of his apartment, but Danny had refused. Sullen and withdrawn and with that dead-eyed stare, he would stumble into the lab with the smell of alcohol laying heavily on his breath. Mac would always send him home on those days, anger building up inside him at the younger man's thoughtlessness, and Danny would simply turn and walk back out the door, not even putting up a fight. If it had been anyone else under any other circumstances, Mac would have fired them in an instant. But he kept hoping that the situation would improve itself. Part of him knew, though, that it wouldn't be that easy.

_**We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time **_

_**But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind...**_

_**Until the night...**_

Then one day, Danny didn't show up for work.

In all his time spent working for Mac in the lab, Danny had never missed a day of work. In fact, up until Aiden's death, he hadn't even been late. Mac had dialed Danny's number, but only got a busy signal, and when he tried his cell phone, an abrupt answering message. The worry that Mac had been harbouring for his friend doubled, and he picked up his phone and called Flack. Flack had been the one that Danny had gone to after the Minhas shooting-there was chance that he might know where he was.

It didn't take long for Flack to answer, and the minute his voice came on the phone Mac knew he wouldn't have an answer to his question.

"Hey, Mac," Flack said, his voice tense. "I was just about to call you. Did Danny come into work yet?"

"No," Mac said slowly. "I was just calling to see if you knew where he was, but i take it you don't."

"No...he was supposed to meet me last night, we were going to catch a movie, but he never showed. When i called him, i didn't get an answer...i'm really worried about him, Mac," the cop admitted.

"Me, too...you know what, Danny's apartment is only a few minutes from here. I'll swing by there and see if i can't figure out what's going on."

Mac snapped his cell phone shut, a cold fear rising in his chest. He knew something was wrong. Grabbing his jacket off the back of his chair, he made another phone call to Stella, quickly explaining the situation and promising to call her and the others as soon as he returned.

Sliding in the driver's seat of his car, Mac only hoped he was overreacting.

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He was finding it hard to keep his balance, now that the alcohol had finally began to take its toll on his brain. Stumbling, he had to take care to grip the rail on the wall tightly, to keep himself from pitching forward on to the stairs. But somehow he managed to climb the three flights needed to make it to his apartment, and let himself in.

The darkness of his apartment seemed to fit his mood, so he didn't see it necessary to turn on any lights. Instead, he felt his way towards his refridgerator, and pulled it open, sifting through it until he found what he was looking for-an unopened bottle of wine. The bottle felt cold in his grasp, but he pulled it out anyway, taking care not to knock over anything else from the fridge. His coordination wasn't up to par-of course, after as many drinks as he had had, he was surprised he had made it this far.

He closed the refridgerator door, cradling the bottle carefully in his hands as he sank down in one of his kitchen chairs. For awhile, he sat there, squinting through the dimness at the wine in his hands, until finally, he popped the cork.

Something told him that he'd already had enough to drink tonight, that anymore would knock him off his feet for the next few days, but this realization passed over him. Raising the bottle to his lips, he took a sip of the sweet liquid. The wine burned his throat all the way down, but it didn't stop him from taking another, and another, finally a full gulp of it. It made him dizzy, and even with the lights out, he could imagine the room tilting, spinning around him.

_Stop this, _he thought, but the sentiment didn't have much support behind it. He knew what he was doing was slowly killing him, but at the same time, it brought him such sweet relief that he didn't mind. He could let everything-everyone-go...

And so he took another drink, and another, and another, until he let the bottle fall from his hand to shatter on the linoleum floor. The world was begining to spin more violently now, the darkness of his apartment suddenly swirling with colors and voices. Danny suddenly found himself falling, and with a jolt, realized that he wasn't fighting it. He was giving in.

And as he fell further, there was only one person he could see, and only one voice he could hear...

_**He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger**_

_**And finally drank away her memory **_

_**Life is short but this time it was bigger **_

_**Than the strength he had to get up off his knees**_

The door to Danny's apartment was open, and Mac pushed it the rest of the way open and letting himself in, pausing a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

"Danny?" Fumbling in the pitch blackness, Mac reached for a lightswitch and found one on the side of the door frame. The apartment was flooded with light, and that was when Mac found him, sprawled on his back on the kitchen floor, slivers of glass and half of a wine bottle lying next to his open hand.

_"Danny!"_

_**He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger**_

_**And finally drank away her memory **_

_**Life is short but this time it was bigger **_

_**Than the strength he had to get up off his knees.**_

_Danny was floating...he had never known such a feeling. It was as if someone had taken an eraser, and was slowly rubbing away at him, deleting him and slowly taking him away from the world. The dark cloud that had been following him was starting to lessen, the storm to clear. _

_And he could see her._

_She was standing there ahead of him, his Aiden. God, she was beautiful, and just as he had remembered. Not the burned and charred body they had found in the car, but the gorgeous woman with the flowing brown hair and captivating smile. _

_"Aiden..." he said, and he found a smile on his lips as he said her name and reached for her hand. He grasped it and once again felt her warmth, the softness of her skin. She was there, she was really there...he pulled her into an embrace, and she returned it, stronger and more real than anything had ever been in his life. _

_All of the pain and hurt that had been tearing him apart melted away with her touch, until all he could feel was her against him, and a happiness was filling his heart, one that he had never felt before._

_"I missed you, Aiden," he whispered. "God, I missed you..."_

_As everything else faded around him, he held her close, and knew that he would never let her go._

_In her arms, he felt whole again._

_In her arms, he was home._

_**We found him with his face down in the pillow **_

_**With a note that said I'll love her 'til I die **_

_**And when we buried him beneath the willow **_

_**The angels sang a whiskey lullaby...**_

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sorry about killing off Danny.../

anyway, tell me how you like it...

breakthehabit


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